Occasionally, it'll throw in a meta reference at you now and again, which'll trigger the deep-thinking inner self in all of us.
I also enjoyed the Crosby, Stills and Nash aliases to include Castiel in the brothers' rock star identities, and the nod to Roman Enterprises going bust as a (potentially meta?) reference to last season.
Its quest-driven plot is diverted by wordplay and meta-references to itself.
How annoyed should viewers be by meta-references, like the fact that a mysterious club they go to is called The End? Five episodes in, the murder victim is revealed (Alison's brother-in-law, a cipher); after eight, we still have no reason to care.
The appeal of Stranger Things is not only in the Where's Wally-style exercise of finding all the show's meta-references to 80s TV and movies, but in marvelling at one's own capacity to get sentimental about things just by virtue of distance.
To re‑cast one of Nathan Bishop's observations: if I had 50p for every cultural nod, wink and meta-reference I'd have to get out my calculator.
But what Rivera was riffing on then and what we were playing with today is anything but original, from Fibonacci to Comp Sci 101, from Stephen Hawking to Yo Dawg, meta-references are everywhere.
The episode is heavily self-referential and contains a number of meta-references.
Angela concurs, saying: "Just play the right notes!" "The Target" features several meta-references and references to previous episodes.
Making meta-references to the fact you've just made your 'worst episode ever' doesn't make it any funnier".
Shearman and Pearson analyzed the portrayals of several of the series' regular characters as 1930s villains, noting several meta-references to the wider series.
